Since the horror at Bondi Junction there has been, rightly, a great deal of focus on the courage of French construction worker Damien Guerot, who confronted the attacker with a bollard, preventing him from ascending to another floor, and of police officer Amy Scott, who shot and killed the attacker.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Guerot will have his visa issues resolved, saying he can “stay as long as he likes”.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said Scott had “without a shadow of a doubt, saved many, many lives” when she “ran towards danger”.
Less attention has been paid to Faraz Tahir, who was killed that day during his first day shift as a security guard at the shopping centre, and his surviving colleague Muhammad Taha. It took a piece from The Australian to point out the double standards that resulted in an intervention into Guerot’s situation and the relative indifference to Taha’s.
Taha, who like Tahir is from Pakistan, was stabbed attempting to help his colleague, and has since received a permanent visa. Albanese, having not mentioned Taha in the press conference praising Guerot, belatedly acknowledged Taha on Friday.
Just as individuals who have been happy to throw around gratuitous and offensive comparisons between protests and mass killings have suddenly fallen mute when confronted with the real thing, there’s a notable silence from another class of culture warrior in the aftermath of Bondi Junction.
Tahir was an Ahmadiyya Muslim who came to Australia in 2022 after fleeing religious persecution in his home country, eventually receiving a refugee visa. Ahmadis are a small Islamic sect with approximately 10-20 million adherents worldwide, the majority of whom live in South Asia. The primary belief that sets Ahmadis apart from other Muslims (putting it very simply) is that they believe there has been a prophet of God since Muhammad. For that, in Pakistan, they face violence, desecrated religious sites, and a constitution that was amended to prohibit them from calling themselves Muslims.
It’s worth remembering, next time someone fulminates about religious freedoms and the “persecution of Christians” in Australia, the absolute silence with which they greeted the violent death of someone who represented what real religious persecution looks like.
